50 Fun Facts About 1964

Which band made its first live US television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964?

The Beatles drew an estimated 73 million viewers; Sullivan is said to have booked them after seeing crowds of fans greet their return to Heathrow from Sweden.

Whom did Cassius Clay beat in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964, to become heavyweight champion?

Sonny Liston, the heavy favourite, stayed on his stool when the bell rang for the seventh round, complaining of an injured shoulder.

Which US state was struck on Good Friday 1964 by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America?

Alaska took the magnitude 9.2 shock, and the tsunamis it set off killed people as far away as the coast of California.

Which Austrian city hosted the 1964 Winter Olympics?

Innsbruck was so short of snow that the Austrian army hauled in thousands of cubic metres of it and packed it onto the ski courses.

Which city hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first Games held in Asia?

Tokyo had its cauldron lit by Yoshinori Sakai, born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb fell, a choice meant to show the country's recovery from the war.

Which US law did President Lyndon Johnson sign on July 2, 1964?

The Civil Rights Act got through only after the Senate voted to cut off a filibuster, something it had never managed before on a civil rights bill.

The US Surgeon General's landmark report of January 11, 1964, warned Americans about the health dangers of what?

Smoking was the target, and Luther Terry chose a Saturday to release the report so it would fill the Sunday papers but spare the stock market.

What did the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the US Constitution outlaw in 1964?

Poll taxes were banned only in federal elections; it took a Supreme Court ruling two years later to end them in state and local votes.

For which film did Sidney Poitier become the first African-American to win Best Actor in 1964?

Lilies of the Field stood alone for 38 years: no other Black actor won Best Actor until Denzel Washington in 2002, the night Poitier collected an honorary Oscar.

The British gang jailed for a combined 307 years in April 1964 had stolen £2.6 million from what?

A mail train from Glasgow to London was the target; Ronnie Biggs, one of the men jailed, climbed out of prison the next year and stayed on the run until 2001.

Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly solo where in April 1964?

Around the world in 29 days: Mock flew a single-engine Cessna and finished ahead of a rival, Joan Merriam Smith, who had set off two days before her.

To which prison was Nelson Mandela sent after being sentenced to life in June 1964?

Robben Island took all but one of the eight men jailed for life: Denis Goldberg, the only white man convicted, was held apart in Pretoria.

Which British television channel began broadcasting on April 20, 1964?

BBC Two's opening night was blacked out by a power cut across west London, so its first scheduled programme was the children's show Play School the next morning.

Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged on April 26, 1964, to form which country?

Tanzania takes its name from both partners, and the union came only months after a revolution on Zanzibar had overthrown the island's sultan.

Which programming language ran its first program at 4:00 a.m. on May 1, 1964?

BASIC was written at Dartmouth by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz so that students outside the sciences could use a computer.

A disallowed equaliser for Peru against Argentina set off one of football's deadliest disasters in which city in May 1964?

Lima's National Stadium had its exits shut, so when police fired tear gas into the stands the fleeing crowd was crushed in the stairwells; the official toll was 328.

Which car made its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 20, 1964?

The Ford GT40 was Henry Ford II's answer after Enzo Ferrari backed out of selling him his company; none finished in 1964, but the car won Le Mans in 1966.

Which country beat the Soviet Union 2-1 to win the 1964 European Nations' Cup?

Spain won the final in Madrid four years after pulling out of the first tournament rather than travel to Moscow to play the same opponents.

Which African country, known under British rule as Nyasaland, became independent on July 6, 1964?

Malawi began under prime minister Hastings Banda, who turned it into a one-party republic two years later and was made president for life in 1971.

What did the Ranger 7 probe send back on July 31, 1964?

The first close-up photos of the Moon arrived in the final minutes before Ranger 7 crashed into it as planned, ending a long run of failed American lunar probes.

Which US destroyer was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964?

USS Maddox and a second destroyer reported another attack two nights later that probably never happened, yet within days Congress handed Johnson broad war powers in Vietnam.

What took place in Liverpool and Manchester on August 13, 1964, for the last time in the United Kingdom?

Judicial hangings ended with Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans, executed in two different prisons for the same murder; Parliament suspended the death penalty for murder the next year.

Which nation did the IOC bar from the 1964 Summer Olympics for refusing to renounce racial discrimination in sport?

South Africa would not condemn apartheid in sport, and it did not return to the Olympics until Barcelona in 1992, once the apartheid laws had been repealed.

Which Disney film premiered in Los Angeles on August 27, 1964, and went on to win five Oscars?

Mary Poppins never went near London: the whole film was shot on soundstages at the Disney studio in Burbank, California, in front of painted backdrops.

Which British newspaper replaced the Daily Herald in September 1964?

The Sun began as a broadsheet promising a radical, independent line; it turned tabloid only after Rupert Murdoch bought it five years later.

Which body submitted its report on the Kennedy assassination on September 24, 1964?

The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; fifteen years later a House committee decided there had probably been a conspiracy.

What did Japan inaugurate on October 1, 1964, as a world first?

A high-speed rail system, the Shinkansen 'bullet train', ran at up to 210 km/h, and the World Bank lent $80 million to help build it.

Which Soviet spacecraft carried the first multi-person crew, three cosmonauts, into orbit in October 1964?

Voskhod 1 was a one-man Vostok capsule refitted for three, so tight that the cosmonauts had to fly without spacesuits.

Who in 1964 became, at 35, the youngest person yet to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Martin Luther King Jr. kept none of the prize money, about $54,000, sharing it out among the groups in the movement he led.

Which Soviet leader was deposed on October 14-15, 1964?

Nikita Khrushchev officially retired for 'advanced age' and ill health; in truth his colleagues had voted him out, and he lived on as a pensioner at his dacha.

Who became British prime minister after Labour's narrow election win on October 15, 1964?

Harold Wilson scraped in with a majority of just four seats, so he called another election 17 months later and won a majority of nearly 100.

Which country exploded its first atomic bomb on October 16, 1964?

China code-named the test 596, for June 1959, the month it resolved to build the bomb alone after the Soviet Union withdrew its help.

From which New York institution was the Star of India sapphire stolen on October 29, 1964?

The American Museum of Natural History was burgled through a window by a trio that included Jack 'Murph the Surf' Murphy; the sapphire turned up in a Miami bus-station locker.

Whom did Lyndon B. Johnson defeat in the November 1964 presidential election?

Barry Goldwater was the unnamed target of Johnson's barely shown 'Daisy' TV ad, in which a girl counting petals is blotted out by a nuclear explosion.

Which New York span, then the world's longest suspension crossing, opened November 21, 1964?

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge honours explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, but its name was misspelled with one 'z' for more than 50 years until New York corrected it in 2018.

Toward which planet did NASA launch Mariner 4 on November 28, 1964?

Mars turned out to be barren and cratered like the Moon in the 21 pictures Mariner 4 sent back, which quashed hopes of finding intelligent life there.

At which university did police arrest about 800 students at a Sproul Hall sit-in in December 1964?

UC Berkeley students in the Free Speech Movement had surrounded a police car holding an arrested activist two months earlier and kept it from moving for more than a day.

Which Lockheed aircraft made its first flight on December 22, 1964?

The SR-71 Blackbird was built after a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union; at three times the speed of sound it simply outran missiles, and none was ever shot down.

Which revolutionary addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on December 11, 1964?

Che Guevara was speaking when Cuban exiles fired a bazooka at the building; the shell fell short and exploded in the East River.

Who was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused to accept it?

Jean-Paul Sartre turned it down, as he did every official honour, arguing that a writer should not let himself be turned into an institution.

Which instrument did Robert Moog demonstrate as a prototype in October 1964?

The synthesizer came from a man who had built and sold theremins since his teens, and it reached the wider world four years later through the hit album Switched-On Bach.

Which country won its first Eurovision Song Contest in 1964 with a singer aged just sixteen?

Italy's Gigliola Cinquetti sang 'Non ho l'età', meaning 'I'm not old enough', at a contest briefly interrupted by a protester carrying a banner that read 'Boycott Franco and Salazar'.

Which South American country's military seized power on March 31, 1964, and ruled for the next 21 years?

Brazil's generals toppled President João Goulart so quickly that an American naval task force ordered to stand by off the coast was never needed.

Which famous European statue had its head sawn off and stolen in April 1964?

The Little Mermaid never got that head back: a new one was cast and fitted, and the Copenhagen statue has since lost her head a second time and an arm as well.

Which future First Lady was born on January 17, 1964?

Michelle Obama met her future husband at a Chicago law firm in 1989, when he arrived for the summer and she was the lawyer assigned to advise him.

Which future Hollywood star was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on September 2, 1964?

Keanu Reeves grew up in Toronto, where his first passion was ice hockey rather than acting.

Which future US vice president was born on October 20, 1964?

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland in the same year that her mother, who had come from India at 19 to study, finished her doctorate.

Which five-star US general died on April 5, 1964?

Douglas MacArthur told Congress that old soldiers never die eight days after President Truman fired him in a clash over how to fight the Korean War.

Which country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died on May 27, 1964?

India had known no other prime minister in its 17 years of independence; his daughter Indira Gandhi, at his bedside that day, took the same office less than two years later.

Which former US president died on October 20, 1964, aged 90, more than 31 years after leaving the White House?

Herbert Hoover held no government post under Roosevelt, then was brought back by Truman after the war to survey the world's food needs and help reorganise the government.